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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @kyletorpey 19h \ on: The world needs bitcoin, not lightning bitcoin
Lightning isn't perfect and will take a long time to build out properly. The correct scaling path can be harder and take more time. But it can work well with tradeoffs today and will improve over time. I wrote a rather in-depth piece about this recently in the context of the debate between Alex Gladstein and Paul Sztorc on What Bitcoin Did: https://protos.com/sztorc-vs-gladstein-can-lightning-scale-bitcoin/
Funny thing, that debate is actually what partially triggered this post. I found Alex's parroting of tired lightning talking points exhausting and so representative of the discourse around lightning for the past few years. Yes, Paul might be overly pessimistic in many ways but he is speaking to a reality on the ground that no one uses lightning but enthusiasts. Adoption just isn't happening and it's incredibly frustrating to see people hand-wave serious issues around onboarding and custody with excuses like "it's just for small amounts".
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They were talking past each other most of the debate but were able to find some commonground by the end (drivechains and lightning work together). No one uses lightning but enthusiasts is partially true, but that's mostly true due to the reality of most people just wanting to buy and hold bitcoin as a store of value, IMO. Lightning has definitely been a positive development, but there is indeed still plenty of work to be done. As a side note, stablecoins have also been an improvement to the traditional system that have taken medium of exchange use cases that people thought were going to be use cases for bitcoin.
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